DEAN FITCHETT.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20703, 29 April 1929, Page 12

DEAN FITCHETT.

HIS LIFE AND TEACHING. ADDRESS BY ARCHDEACON WHITEHEAD. At the evening service at All Saints’ Church yesterday, Archdeacon Whitehead gave an eloquent address on the life and teaching of the late Dean Fitchctt. In the course of his remarks Archdeacon Whitehead said: “ It is fitting that I should say something to you about the dean, although I know I am speaking to some people whose acquaintance with him was much longer than mine. During the years that I assisted the dean in this church I was not only treated as a colleague should be, but he also gave me the gift of his friendship. To he a friend of the dean was a liberal education in itself. Much of. what I have to say will he gathered from - the • many- delightful conversations I had with him.

"I do not propose to recount the external events in the dean’s life, all of which have been dealt with very well in our newspapers, but I should like to refer to one aspect of his life’s work, about which, so far, nothing has bCon said. The dean represented this diocese for many years in the General Synod. There he had long been recognised as the most remarkable man in it. It will he understood as no derogation from office when I say that neither the archbishop nor the bishops carried greater weight than Dean Fitchett. Last synod, in March and April, 1928, the dean was present, and received the congratulations of the primate and the members of synod on his many and notable services to the Church of the Province of New Zealand. . •

“ To the outsider the dean would have seemed almost entirely a man of intellect. It has been indeed an immense advantage to our’New Zealand church in its small beginnings that it has had in its councils a man o! such wide knowledge and keen mind. One -of the strongest temptations to a religious' community in a new country is to lose itself in practical activity, ‘in the serving of tables,’ and so become a pierfervid, but narrow, sect. The’ dean, was always strongly opposed to any attempt to narrow the boundaries of our church. In this way, he was ap advocate of the comprehensiveness’ of the church of England,. using the word ‘ comprehensiveness ’in ' its best seiysc. “ Sincerity, conviction, and an intelligently advocated cause always won the dean respect. As an illustration of the width of his sympathy I may instance the case of my friend the late Air Mortimer. Mr Mortimer was a coniinced Anglo-Catholic and an' ardent socialist. Neither • Anglo-Catholicism nor Socialism was acceptable to the dean. Socialism, indeed, he detested. Both these movements Mr Mortimer defended and upheld with passionate convictipp and much intellectual acuteness. The result was that there was no priest in this diocese for whom the dean had so high a regard. In the nrst year I was in Dunedin the dean often said to me:- ‘Why,does not Mr Alort'mer come to see me oftencr? ’ When he did come they enjoyed one another s company immensely.. Mr Mortimer died while the -dean was in England, and I remember the latter saying to me on his return that Mr Mortimer’s death was an irreparable loss to the diocese. Though not, as 1 have said, an Anglo-Catholic, the Dean had a deep understhnding of the. religions appeal of ceremonial. Apropos of Dr Barnes’s diatribes in sacramental magic, the Dean remarked to me .‘ I have the greatest sym pathy with those who wish to use the material to escape the material. These people (the Bishop of Birmingham and his- friends) wish to preyeht such things 1 being done, and I cannot ’agree with them.’ I have said that the Dear ,might appear to on outsider as almost exclusively an intellectual. But this was far from being the case. He had the Englishman’s dislike to showing his feelings, which with him were very deep indeed. Strange, it may seem to some, his'emotional sympathy it. was that prevented him from being a theologian pure simple. His understanding and feeling for the average • man’s religious outlook made him feci impatient with the minute distinctions and subtleties of theology. The ordinary needed u grasp of certain broad facts of the Faith, even though he might not have any very profound understanding pf it. Dean Fitchett’s conviction that theology should bo on broad rather than minute lines made* him regret the great controversies of the fourth century, during which the' Church had formulated her theology of the person of Christ. “ Though a Liberal in theology.- and deeply appreciative of the scientific criticism of the Scriptures, the Dean had no patience with those who would whittle the Christian Faith away. He believed in the Godhead of our Lord, in the miraculous, and the life of the world to come. Nothing filled him ■ with greater disgust than any attempt to find a religious substitute for personal immortality. ' : By personal immortality I' mean our surviving death and remembering who we arc. 1 . To survive and. not remember, the Doan used to say, was to become someone else. Equally futile as a solution of the problem of human lif; appeared to him the doctrine that all that escapes death in us is our influence. We live again, according to this teaching, only in .minds made better by our presence. Beautiful- .as this view may bq, it is a poor substitute for personal existence after death. .-® I. remember the Dean’s remarking’ of nil essay in refutation of this impersonal survival doctrine, that this writing was like a breath of fresh, air,’ “And now lie walks by-sight, and no 1 ., as wo, by faitb. When wc reflect on his long life of service, of all ho meant to iis, and the great blank his going loaves, we are sure that we shall never sec his like again. “Let me conclude with words from the poet whose work he knew and loved stwoll: I have lived my life, and that which I have done may He within Himself make, pure! but thou,— pray for my soul. More things arc ■ wrought by prayer than this world dreams of . . . For whnt arc men better than sheep- or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, if knowing God, they lift not hands at prayer, both for themselves and those* who called them friend? For to the whole , round earth ■is every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God.”